In The News
Thanks for your patience as I fumbled my way through hosting an esports event.
Gamers’ Choice Awards winners can be found here.
Daybreak laid off staff “as part of a structure optimization,” Variety’s Brian Crecente writes. “Former Daybreak Studios president John Smedley took to Twitter Friday afternoon to talk about the layoffs noting that ’70 people is a lot.’”
Sledgehammer Games co-founder Glen Schofield is out. “I’ll be leaving Activision end of Dec. and taking some time off to relax. Then off to something else exciting. Thank u Activision for everything,” he tweeted.
Steam:
Three developers have delayed or cancelled game launches on Steam in favor of the Epic Games Store, PC Gamer’s Samuel Horti reports. “Satisfactory, one of the upcoming games you’ll be able to buy on Epic’s new store, will no longer be available on Steam, while two others—Rebel Galaxy Outlaw and Genesis Alpha One—will be timed exclusives for the Epic Store, the developers have announced.”
Steam is cracking down on “games that feature themes of ‘child exploitation,’” GI.biz’s Haydn Taylor writes.
Infinity Blade’s trilogy has been removed from Steam.
China started an Online Games Ethics Committee (ethics, right) “that reviews ethical issues in video gaming, marking the country’s latest attempt to tighten control over the world’s biggest games market,” South China Morning Post’s Zheping Huang reports.
Boosting is officially illegal in South Korea. “The National Assembly recently passed a revision to the Game Industry Promotion Act, prohibiting entities from offering paid services to level up a gamer’s account using methods unauthorized by the game’s creator,” The Korea Herald’s Sohn Ji-young reports.
The British Parliament “announced an inquiry into the growth of ‘immersive and addictive technologies’ such as virtual and augmented realities,” Taylor reports.
Greenlit Content acquired Casual Connect.
Doom’s John Romero announced he’s working on a project called Sigil.
Idk man, I do not know…
The top 10 Twitch channels from last week feature yogscast in 1st, riotgames in 2nd and callofduty in 4th.
Interviews: Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime (IGN).
Players’ Lounge – Sponsored News:
Players’ Lounge redesigned its product, resulting in a 25% increase in week-over-week matches played for four weeks running.
Investors continue to assault our inboxes. Including a few billionaires. We’re holding strong.
Players’ Lounge is hiring a Senior Vice President of Engineering! Know a brilliant, competitive senior developer with PHP and AAA/F2P development experience? Slide into our DMs.
Extra Esports News:
Congratulations OpTic Gaming on winning CWL Las Vegas! They defeated eUnited to take home $100,000. Splyce came in 3rd and Luminosity Gaming in 4th.
Interviews: MLG’s Adam Apicella and Treyarch’s Jay Puryear (VentureBeat).
Esports investments in November can be found here.
The International Olympic Committee continues to huddle over esports, and thus far they’re still uncertain, according to Reuters. “The Olympic body said uncertainties in the industry remained as far as any potential Olympic inclusion was concerned. ‘Some egames are not compatible with the Olympic values and therefore cooperation with them is excluded,’ the IOC said following an Olympic Summit of stakeholders in Lausanne. It also noted that the industry was changing rapidly, while also being fragmented with competition between major commercial operators.”
Valve isn’t thrilled with its Facebook streaming deal, according to Rod “Slasher” Breslau.
DreamHack announced its 2019 schedule.
AT&T joined the Pennsylvania Esports Coalition, Esports Insider’s Oliver Ring reports.
Rocket Pass 2 is live for Rocket League until March 18.
Partnerships:
Nairoby “Nairo” Quezada and Wendy’s are partnering.
Lyon EDG is partnering with Adidas, TEO’s Hongyu Chen reports.
Topgolf and TCL are partnering for “the first TCL esports Lounge,” according to a press release.
Happy birthday Mikołaj “Elazer” Ogonowski, Jared “PiG” Krensel and Dan “Bluey” Bluett!